Budget

With yesterday's launch of AMD's 65W Kaveri APUs, it seemed a good time to give some recommendations for new system builds. We're starting out at the budget end of the spectrum, however, and pricing/availability on Kaveri generally rules it out. We'll keep things short and look at two builds, one AMD and one Intel. Outside of the CPU/APU and motherboard, parts are generally interchangeable.
Budget AMD System
Component
Description
Price
CPU
AMD A6-6400K (2x3.9GHz, 1MB, 65W, 32nm)
$65
Motherboard
MSI A88X-G41
$73
RAM
Team Vulcan 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-2133 CL10
$71
Storage
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB
$55
SSD
SanDisk Ultra Plus SDSSDHP-128G-G25 128GB
$60
Case
NZXT Source 210 S210-001
$40
Power Supply
Seasonic SS-300ET 300W 80 Plus Bronze
$38
Total (without OS)
$402
The Kaveri APUs provide a decent blend of general and gaming performance, but finding one priced reasonably for a budget system is still a bit difficult (depending on...